Tag Archives: SF

2018 #LocusAward Winners for Best in Science-Fiction (#SF, #Scifi) and #Fantasy

Mazel Tov to all the nominees and winners of this prestigious award!

The Locus Science Fiction Foundation announced the winners of the 2018 Locus Awards on June 23. The Locus Awards are chosen by a survey of readers in an open online poll. Connie Willis presented the awards, as well as judged the annual Hawaiian shirt contest.

Our universe is ruled by physics. Faster than light travel is impossible―–until the discovery of The Flow, an extradimensional field available at certain points in space-time, which can take us to other planets around other stars.

Riding The Flow, humanity spreads to innumerable other worlds. Earth is forgotten. A new empire arises, the Interdependency, based on the doctrine that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It’s a hedge against interstellar war―and, for the empire’s rulers, a system of control.

The Flow is eternal―–but it’s not static. Just as a river changes course, The Flow changes as well. In rare cases, entire worlds have been cut off from the rest of humanity. When it’s discovered that the entire Flow is moving, possibly separating all human worlds from one another forever, three individuals―–a scientist, a starship captain, and the emperox of the Interdependency―–must race against time to discover what, if anything, can be salvaged from an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse.

FANTASY NOVEL

WINNER:The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth) by N. K. Jemisin

BLURB:

The shattering conclusion to the post-apocalyptic and highly acclaimed New York Times bestselling trilogy that began with The Fifth Season, winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2016, and The Obelisk Gate, winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2017.

The Moon will soon return. Whether this heralds the destruction of humankind or something worse will depend on two women.

Essun has inherited the power of Alabaster Tenring. With it, she hopes to find her daughter Nassun and forge a world in which every orogene child can grow up safe.

For Nassun, her mother’s mastery of the Obelisk Gate comes too late. She has seen the evil of the world, and accepted what her mother will not admit: that sometimes what is corrupt cannot be cleansed, only destroyed.

THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS… FOR THE LAST TIME.

FIRST NOVEL

WINNER:The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter (The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club) by Theodora Goss

BLURB:

Based on some of literature’s horror and science-fiction classics, this is the story of a remarkable group of women who come together to solve the mystery of a series of gruesome murders—–and the bigger mystery of their own origins.

Mary Jekyll, alone and penniless following her parents’ death, is curious about the secrets of her father’s mysterious past. One clue in particular hints that Edward Hyde, her father’s former friend and a murderer, may be nearby, and there is a reward for information leading to his capture…a reward that would solve all of her immediate financial woes.

But her hunt leads her to Hyde’s daughter, Diana, a feral child left to be raised by nuns. With the assistance of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Mary continues her search for the elusive Hyde, and soon befriends more women, all of whom have been created through terrifying experimentation: Beatrice Rappaccini, Catherin Moreau, and Justine Frankenstein.

When their investigations lead them to the discovery of a secret society of immoral and power-crazed scientists, the horrors of their past return. Now it is up to the monsters to finally triumph over the monstrous.

NOVELLA

WINNER:All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

Also, Winner: 2017 Nebula Award for Best Novella
Winner: 2018 Alex Award
Finalist: 2017 Hugo Award for Best Novella
One of the Verge’s Best Books of 2017
A New York Times Bestseller
BLURB:

“As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure.”

In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.

But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid—a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.

But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it’s up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.

NOVELETTE

WINNER:The Hermit of Houston by Samuel R. Delany

BLURB:

Samuel R. Delany‘s first story for F&SF in 40 years (since 1977), “The Hermit of Houston”[:] Those looking for a strongly plotted or action-filled tale are not going to find it here; instead, this is an old man’s rambling, discursive reminiscence, jumping back and forth in time, of his long life in a world that has been shattered and reshaped by some unspecified disaster or series of disasters (probably climate change-related), with national boundaries redrawn and society’s views on sexual identity rethought, so that both men and women as we define them today have been sorted into many different genders, “natural” procreation is sternly discouraged, and much of the rearing of children is left to youth gangs and armies. The story can be hard to chew in some spots, at its most discursive, but if you stick with it, it will reward you with some fascinating social speculation about a different kind of future society and some compelling imagery. (Warning: the story is also much more sexually explicit than is usual for F&SF.)

A powerful science-fiction story about an architect on Earth commissioned to create (via long distance) a masterwork with materials from the last abandoned Martian colony, a monument that will last thousands of years longer than Earth, which is dying.

Fantasy fiction has produced some of the most unforgettable heroes ever conjured onto the page…. Classic characters like these made sword and sorcery a storytelling sensation, a cornerstone of fantasy fiction—–and an inspiration for a new generation of writers, spinning their own outsize tales of magic and swashbuckling adventure.

Now, in The Book of Swords, acclaimed editor and bestselling author, Gardner Dozois, presents an all-new anthology of original epic tales by a stellar cast of award-winning modern masters—–many of them set in their authors’ best-loved worlds. Join today’s finest tellers of fantastic tales… on action-packed journeys into the outer realms of dark enchantment and intrepid derring-do, featuring a stunning assortment of fearless swordsmen and warrior women who face down danger and death at every turn with courage, cunning, and cold steel.

For the first time, a deluxe collector’s edition of the pathbreaking novels and stories that reinvented science fiction, with new introductions by the [recently deceased] author.

In such visionary masterworks as the Nebula and Hugo Award winners, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin redrew the map of modern science-fiction, imagining a galactic confederation of human colonies founded by the planet Hain, an array of worlds whose divergent societies—the result of both evolution and genetic engineering—allow her to speculate on what is intrinsic in human nature. Now, for the first time, the complete Hainish novels and stories are collected in a deluxe two-volume Library of America boxed set, with new introductions by the author.

Volume one gathers the first five Hainish novels: Rocannon’s World, in which an ethnologist sent to a bronze-age planet must help defeat an intergalactic enemy; Planet of Exile, the story of human colonists stranded on a planet that is slowly killing them; City of Illusions, which finds a future Earth ruled by the mysterious Shing; and the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning masterpieces, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed–—as well as four short stories.

Volume two presents Le Guin’s final two Hainish novels, The Word for World Is Forest, in which Earth enslaves another planet to strip its natural resources, and The Telling, the harrowing story of a society which has suppressed its own cultural heritage. Rounding out the volume are seven short stories and the story suite, Five Ways to Forgiveness, published here in full for the first time.

The endpapers feature Le Guin‘s own hand-drawn map of Gethen, the planet that is the setting for The Left Hand of Darkness, and a full-color chart of the known worlds of Hainish descent.

Amazon‘s announcement, with links to all nominees’ and winners’ book blurbs and covers:

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